March 31, 2009

Challenge The Bastards

It's time for all you spineless ad ferrets to get up off your asses and defend yourselves.

Yesterday we talked about a new study that laid bare as a fraud the ubiquitous story that TV is dying.

Unfortunately, the effect of this story is not just that our newspapers and airwaves have been full of bullshit for the past five years. There have been real-world effects on the lives and livelihoods of real people.

It's time to undo some of the damage.

Next time some smelly Twitter-weasel starts screeching the "tv is dying/advertising is dead" stuff and starts mouthing-off about his precious social media, challenge the bastard.

Here at The Ad Contrarian we abhor violence. But putting a good scare into a bedwetter never did any harm.

Here is your Offical Ad Contrarian Anti-Bullshit Cheat Sheet:

- TV viewing is at an all-time high. The average American now watches more television than ever before.

YouTube, Hulu, iPhones and all the other online video and cellphones combined account for less than 1% of all video viewed.

- TiVo and other DVRs account for less than 5% of all TV viewing.

- Fewer than 3% of total tv spots are being missed as a result of TiVo ad-skipping.

- TV viewership has grown over 7% since 2000.

- The positive effect of more viewership on advertising is twice the negative effect of TiVo ad-skipping.

- The New York Times recently reported on two new studies that show that commercials actually improve the enjoyment of watching TV. (That one's a little hard to swallow, but we've gotta use whatever ammo we've got.)

If you weenies don't get up off your butts and do something soon, we'll all wind up writing freaking meta tags for Google.

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Ad Contrarian Says:

"Shakespeare was a storyteller. You're a copywriter.""Good ads appeal to us as consumers. Great ads appeal to us as humans."

"Social Media: Tens of millions of disagreeable people looking to make trouble."

"As an ad medium, the web is a much better yellow pages and a much worse television."

"Sometimes success in the advertising business requires sitting quietly and letting clients proceed with their hysterical delusions."

"Marketers prefer precise answers that are wrong to imprecise answers that are right."

"Brand studies last for months, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and generally have less impact on business than cleaning the drapes."

"The idea that the same consumer who was frantically clicking her TV remote to escape from advertising was going to merrily click her mouse to interact with it is going to go down as one of the great advertising delusions of all time."

"Nobody really knows what "creativity" is. Every year thousands of people take a pilgrimage to find out. This involves flying to Cannes, snorting cocaine, and having sex with smokers."

"Marketers habitually overestimate the attraction of new things and underestimate the power of traditional consumer behavior."

"We don’t get them to try our product by convincing them to love our brand. We get them to love our brand by convincing them to try our product."

"In American business, there is nothing stupider than the previous generation of management."

"If the message is right, who cares what screen people see it on? If the message is wrong, what difference does it make?"

"The only form of product information on the planet less trustworthy than advertising is the shrill ravings of web maniacs."

"There's no bigger sucker than a gullible marketer convinced he's missing a trend."

"All ad campaigns are branding campaigns. Whether you intend it to be a branding campaign is irrelevant. It will create an impression of your brand regardless of your intent."

"Nobody ever got famous predicting that things would stay pretty much the same."